Mark Twain

Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.

There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

No comment is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular is providence.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

Gratitude is a debt which usually goes on accumulating like blackmail; the more you pay, the more is exacted. In time, you are made to realize that the kindness done you is become a curse and you wish it had not happened.

It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.

The most beautiful woman is the one who is never divulging, she knows what she is and everything else is worth her.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million.

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

To be mature you have to realize what you value most… Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one’s own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.

Some of your grief you have cured, and lived to survive; but what torments of pain have you endured that haven’t as yet arrived.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.